Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is an analytical technique allowing the ultrasensitive measurement of the abundance of long-lived rare isotopes, naturally occurring in nature or artificially produced, with respect to the corresponding abundant isotope, as small as 10^-15. These isotopic ratios represent, in a vast variety of cases, important markers of natural or anthropogenic processes that have characterized in the past the evolution of terrestrial ecosystem and human activity.

ISOCORE operates an AMS facility based on the NEC tandem accelerator of the Dept. of Mathematics and Physics of the Campania University L. Vanvitelli, reaching a state-of-the-art precision and accuracy level. The AMS system, based on the 9SDH-2 Pelletron accelerator, was built by National Electrostatics Corp., Middleton, WI (USA). The system consists of a sputter ion source for 40 cathodes (MC-SNICS). The sequencing injection is performed by a voltage biased magnet chamber (MBS). The 3 MV tandem accelerator has two Pelletron chains as a charging system, which is controlled by a generating voltmeter feedback for terminal potential stabilization. Stripping is performed by a recirculating gas stripper system. The 90° analyzing magnet is followed by a 90° electrostatic analyzer which guides rare isotopes into the ionization chamber telescope while abundant isotopes are measured in offset Faraday cups.

Isotopic ratios of several radionuclides such as ¹⁰Be, ¹⁴C, ²⁶Al, ¹²⁹I, ²³⁶U and Pu isotopes are routinely measured. The unparalleled sensitivity of AMS enables routine high-precision measurements of ¹⁴C/¹²C for applications in archaeology, artwork identification, environmental and agri-food investigations, as well as Actinides characterization in wastes and releases.